Anti-teenager “pink lights to show up acne”

In a similar vein to the Mosquito, intentionally shallow steps (and, superficially at least–though not really–blue lighting in toilets, which Raph d’Amico dissects well here), we now have residents’ associations installing pink lighting to highlight teenagers’ acne and so drive them away from an area:
Residents of a Nottinghamshire housing estate have installed pink lights which [...]

{In|Ex}clusive Design

Giving with one hand, and taking away with the other.
The juxtaposition of hand rails and anti-sit spikes outside this church in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire suggests a particular configuration of design priorities: helping people climb the steps, but forbidding anyone sitting on the wall.
Are the targets different groups of people? We might think so: older people [...]

On ‘Design and Behaviour’ this week: Do you own your stuff? And a strange council-run ‘Virtual World for young people’

GPS-aided repo and product-service systems

Ryan Calo of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society brought up the new phenomenon of GPS-aided car repossession and the implications for the concepts of property and privacy:
A group of car dealers in Oregon apparently attached GPS devices to cars sold to customers with poor credit so as to be able [...]

How to enjoy taking notes and revising things

It occurs to me that it’s now October, and in Britain that really means the summer’s over (though as I write this it’s pleasantly sunny and crisp outside). And despite attending a lot of very interesting talks and events over the past few months, I’ve been very lax at writing them up for the blog. [...]

“Steps are like ready-made seats” (so let’s make them uncomfortable)

Adrian Short let me know about something going on in Sutton, Surrey, at the same time both fundamentally pathetic and indicative of the mindset of many public authorities in ‘dealing with’ emergent behaviour:
An area in Rosehill, known locally as “the steps”, is to be re-designed to stop young people sitting there.
Not only will the steps [...]

Mosquito controversy goes high-profile

The Mosquito anti-teenager sound device, which we’ve covered on this site a few times, was yesterday heavily criticised by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, launching the BUZZ OFF campaign in conjunction with Liberty and the National Youth Agency:
Makers and users of ultra-sonic dispersal devices are being told to “Buzz Off” today [...]

Making exercise cooler

Main image and above right: Snowdown aesthetic model; below right: Snowdown functional test rig prototype.
Snowdown, by Matthew Barnett, is fantastic. Powered by a child exercising, moving the handle, it crushes ice cubes and compacts them to make snowballs. There are a lot of kids out there who would very much like one of these, at [...]

More educational architectures of control: museums

A ‘traditional’ museum display cabinet in the Kremlin museum, Moscow. I liked the owl.
Two very interesting posts from last week looked at the use of control in museum design – Frankie Roberto discusses trying to get children (in particular) to learn interactively, and Josh Clark has some thoughts on the way that museum and gallery [...]

Education, forcing functions and understanding

Mr Person at Text Savvy looks at an example of ‘Guided Practice’ in a maths textbook – the ‘guidance’ actually requiring attention from the teacher before the students can move on to working independently – and asks whether some type of architecture of control (a forcing function perhaps) would improve the situation, by making sure [...]

No sliding

These spikes are embedded every couple of feet in the hand-rails of a staircase at Highbury & Islington station in London, presumably to prevent kids (or adults) sliding down them. They’re not especially sharp, but would bruise someone pretty badly.
Note that there are also additional stainless steel hand-rails – this staircase may have replaced an [...]